1. Technical Field
An aspect of the present invention relates to a sheet conveyer and an image forming apparatus.
2. Related Art
A sheet conveyer with a sheet cassette for storing sheets therein, is known. The sheet cassette may include a lifting plate, on which the sheets to be conveyed are stacked. The lifting plate may be movable between a separated position, in which the lifting plate is lowered to be separated from a conveyer device, and an approximate position, in which the lifting plate is uplifted to be closer to the conveyer device.
The sheet conveyer may further have a lateral guides, which are slidably movable along a direction of width of the sheets, on the lifting plate. The lateral guides may fix a widthwise position of the sheets on the lifting plate and may be movable along with the lifting plate between the separated position and the approximate position.
When the lifting plate is placed in the approximate position, the sheets set on the lifting plate may contact the conveyer device so that the conveyer device may convey the contacting sheet.
If the lateral guides were not movable along with the lifting plate, for example, it might be necessary that the lateral guides might be attached to a bottom of the sheet cassette which is in a position lower than the lifting plate, and the lifting plate might be formed to have cutouts or other additional structure to avoid interference with the lateral guides when the lifting plate is moved. Thus, the sheet cassette might be required to have a more complicated structure, and a quantity of parts in the sheet cassette might be increased.
In the aforementioned sheet cassette, however, with the lateral guides which are movable integrally with the lifting plate, it is not necessary to form the cutouts in the lifting plate or to arrange other additional structure in the bottom of the sheet cassette. Accordingly, manufacturing cost for the sheet cassette may be lowered compared to the sheet cassette without the lateral guides movable along with the lifting plate.